Tag Archive for diabetes

You’re going to love today’s Success Story. Aida has been working with me since last Fall, and so far, she’s lost more than 30 pounds ( so has her husband ). She’s also reduced and eliminated several medications, become a regular “packer” and
“cooker”, and broken her food addiction. Really broken, as in, it’s amazing. Thank goodness she listened to her “fear”. Too many people AREN’T afraid of the state of their health, they think their prescription drugs actually make them well. They don’t.

If you’re on meds, say like, BP pills, statins, mood meds, migraine/headache pills, pain pills, stomach pills, etc, you’re got problems. These medications aren’t making you better, they’re suppressing and managing your symptoms; the CAUSE of the symptoms is still there and still doing damage. If you want to get healthy, you have to (1) eat for health (2) figure out the root cause of the symptoms and address that (lifestyle changes).

Aida’s a Type 2 Diabetic; diabetes 2 is a LIFESTYLE disease. It can be reversedthrough lifestyle changes. Insulin and blood sugar rise and fall according to our food choices, exercise/activity, and stress management. No One has diabetes because they’re deficient in diabetes drugs. Did you know that by 2020, the CDC predicts that 50% of the US will be diabetic, and that it will cost 3.35 TRILLION dollars to “manage” it. Not CURE it, or REVERSE it, but MANAGE it. No health care system EVER could afford that. EVER.

What about Food Addiction, because this is HUGE. I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: if you’re trying to get healthy/lose weight with Low Fat, No Fat foods, or Diet Processed Foods, you’re just feeding and nurturing your addiction and furthering your inflammatory state. You’ve got to ditch Grains, Sugar, Chemicals, and Hydrogenated Oils, and you’ve got to focus on a diet full of healthy fats, good proteins, TONS of vegetables, some fruits, some nuts and seeds, some dairy if you can tolerate it. Grains, sugars, and chemicals stimulate the Addictive Areas of Your Brain. Always.

Think you can’t live without your Cereal, your Bread, Your Beer or Wine (liquid donuts)? You can. Lot’s of people break their addictions, why couldn’t you?

Moms and Dads, are you raising future Diabetics, or future Food Addicts? If you’re raising your kids on a diet of pop tarts, cereals, sandwiches, pizza, and junk food, rest assured, you are. And it will happen to them far quicker than it happened to your generation. No One can eat those foods without accumulating damage. No One.

Take control of your thoughts, instead of nurturing your addictions, nurture positive habits and attitudes about food, yourself, and exercising. Forget everything Big Food, Big Pharma, and our government has told you about Healthy Whole Grains. All carbohydrates are broken down to single cell sugars in our gut; that means ALL CARBS BECOME EITHER GLUCOSE OR FRUCTOSE. ALL OF THEM. High blood glucose and fructose levels and high insulin create an inflammatory state, and inflammation’s the cause of EVERY DISEASE OUT THERE. You can change yourself. Honest. You can be an inspiration and example for your children. You can feel energetic and well; you can be a healthy weight, start with Real Whole Food.

Here’s Aida’s story:

Last fall, I was scared. I was tired. I was frustrated.

I had let my health go unchecked, even though I knew better, and was on a lot of medications. I had let my appetites go unchecked, knowing that it was hurting my body, but I was addicted. Now, my doctors were getting really serious with me, and it made me scared. They kept adding more and more medications. I had to do something, but I felt as if I had tried everything before and failed. Why try it again to just fail again? When I tried to do what the doctors told me to do, it seemed as if I never improved, and sometimes got worse. I was also seeing my husband’s health getting worse as well. We didn’t want to do another weight loss diet. We needed to get healthy. We wanted to get healthy.

Someone suggested I look at this website, and enter Debbie! Debbie sat us down together and began teaching us. This is the first time I had heard most of the information she was sharing. Her plan for us began with just eat real whole foods! Our health would begin with what we put in our mouths, and our attitudes towards our foods. Stop wheat and other grains – which we had done before and were somewhat successful with. We knew we could do that. Stop sugars, including most artificial sweeteners, which would be tougher, because I was addicted.

We listened to what she had to say and began implementing this new approach and were shocked that almost immediately we saw improvement in our health. Hunger went away. Cravings went away. For me, my blood sugars normalized within days! I began to look forward to my next round of doctors, just to make sure that this new way of life was really working. And it was! All my “numbers” showed improvement within a couple of months, and have continued to improve with each doctor visit. I have been taken off some of the medications.

Through monthly meetings and daily emails, Debbie has continued to teach and encourage. She has helped me understand what makes me personally healthy. She has helped me with my food addictions. My husband’s health also reflects the changes we have made.

Now, I am looking forward to this spring, with clarity, with energy, and healthier (and lighter) than I have been in over 30 years!

I got to spend all day Wednesday at a seminar called “The Gut Brain Connection”; I was in Heaven. There’s a LOT of new information on the bugs in our gut because the NIH and it’s European counterparts have culminated a multi-year, multi-multi-million dollar study that’s revealed all sorts of FASCINATING facts. It turns out that there’s a whole lot more to know about the bugs in our stomachs other than “antibiotics kill them, so eat yogurt”. A whole lot more.

I’m going to bullet point some facts, and highlight some resources if you’re interested in studying it further. Know this though: our gut bacteria interacts with and has ENORMOUS effects on our ENTIRE BODY. Way more than scientists and doctors had ever guessed.

* Our bugs send information to every cell in our body, even our DNA.

* Bad bugs send Bad information, and Good bugs send Good information. What we have in there really matters.

* There are probably over a 1000 species of bugs, totaling over 100 TRILLION bacteria just in our intestines! Three to five pounds of bacteria JUST IN OUR COLON alone!!! You’ve got to admit that’s a fun fact.

* Dopamine is made in equal parts in the gut and the brain. Here’s what Dopamine does: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson’s Disease, and people with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction. (LIKE FOOD ADDICTION)

* Serotonin is made primarily in the gut, 90%; only 10% is made in the brain. Here’s a brief explanation of serotonin: Serotonin is a type of neurotransmitter that is found mainly in the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Much of the serotonin is located in the GI tract where it is used to regulate digestion. Serotonin helps regulate mood, sleep, appetite, learning and memory.

* Our gut bacteria play HUGE roles in making sure adequate amounts of these 2 neurotransmitters are produced.

* What compromises our good gut bacteria, which should number in the 100s of TRILLIONS, and mostly populate our Large Intestine? So much: Sugar, Flours, Processed Foods, Antibiotics, EVERY SINGLE OTC AND PRESCRIPTION DRUG Chemicals, and Stress/Cortisol. Every thing on this list pretty much decimates our gut flora either directly or by changing normal pH levels. Look at the list again and go over your week, then go over your kid’s week.

* MSG, which is a known neurotoxin and has horrible effects on gut bacteria and brain cells, takes 10 – 14 days to clear the body. Other names for MSG: Natural Flavors and Yeast Extract. (FDA approved) (Read Your labels, and your kid’s labels)

* Being Diabetic and Pre-Diabetic ALWAYS CHANGES GUT FLORA. ALWAYS. If this is you, supplement with a good probiotic.

* The toxic waste from both C-Dif and E Coli harm the gut wall (leaky gut, here you come). So does alcohol. Anything that harms the wall harms the body’s ability to make and maintain good bacteria and sets up an environment for bad bacteria.

* Gut bacteria have a direct link to normal weight or obesity.

* It can take anywhere from 4 weeks to several MONTHS to repopulate gut flora after antibiotics. THINK ABOUT THIS BEFORE YOU POP SOME FOR YOUR NEXT SORE THROAT. There are so many holistic, wonderful treatments out there you could use instead that are just as effective with no side effects.

* Starving yourself by either not eating, or eating very low calorie, initiates stress and anxiety, via the hormone cortisol, which tells the neurotransmitters and bacteria in your gut to signal your thyroid to SLOW DOWN, and then they signal fat cells to STORE MORE. The body will do ANYTHING not to starve. (there’s that communication I was talking about)

* Ghrelin is a hormone which INCREASES appetite. Alcohol and sleep deprivation INCREASE ghrelin. So does stress.

* Stomach fat is (1) VERY metabolically active (2) it produces a lot of ESTROGEN (3) fat bellies are full of INFLAMMATION, that’s why they’re hard (4) that inflammation is Inflammatory Cytokines that don’t just stay in the belly, the shoot around the Whole Entire Body through the blood stream, wrecking Havoc and creating disease.

* Probiotics are great, and now we know that specific strains can be used to specifically target specific conditions. Cool.

* Nothing beats Probiotic Foods and Drinks: cultured and fermented vegetables, keifer, kombucha, and real yogurt. Numbers wise, there’s millions and millions more bacteria in food, and a wider range of species, than in any pill supplement. If you’re trying to correct a condition or improve health, use the pills along with the foods/drinks. ***** Vinegar does NOT make a food cultured or fermented!!*****

* A single course of antibiotics can wipe out up to 20 species. Sometimes, they DON’T make a come back.

Does anything cause more anxiety in the food world than Carbohydrates? Ask people to give up or cut back on bread, pasta, crackers, and chips, and you’ll often see fear in their eyes. I’ve had 100 moms say to me, “what else do you feed your kids?”. Grain based foods are cheap, plentiful, easily prepared and quickly served. What’s faster than cereal for breakfast or pasta for dinner? Has anything been pushed on us harder than grain based foods? Have we ever seen a commercial of a group of guys bonding over steaks while watching football? Or a harried mother shooing her kids to the school bus while passing them a turkey sausage? ( I think the meat industry needs to hire me!) We’ve been subjected to a barrage of hypnotic grain pushing advertising for our entire lives, and it’s worked.

You all, grains are killing us. Please, please, keep reading. If you need to lose weight, get rid of headaches, anxiety, ADD, or depression, if you need to reverse Diabetes or Heart Disease, if you suffer from bad periods, bad skin, Man Boobs, low testosterone, sore and swollen joints, you can improve/fix all these conditions by eliminating grains – completely – from your life.

Here’s a quick rundown on what happens when we eat grains (from Oatmeal to Barley, to Wheat, to Spelt, Whichever and All) : in your gut the grains are broken down to Glucose/Sugar, which leaches through your intestine wall right into the blood stream. Now we’ll call it Blood Sugar. ( SPOILER: whole wheat flour breaks down even quicker than white flour!! ) Your body needs to keep your Blood Sugar between 80 and 100. Everything over 100 MUST BE DELT WITH IMMEDIATELY. The pancreas releases the hormone Insulin, which grabs the excess BS and tries to remove it from the blood stream. There are only 3 options: (1) some of the muscle cells will need a molecule of glucose (2) the emergency liver store might need some (3) ALL THEREST GET REMADE INTO TRIGLYCERIDES. Then the liver makes LDL to transport those triglycerides thru your bloodstream and into the fat tissue in your abdominal area.

Other problems with grains and high blood sugar? (1) Glycation, which is when the sticky blood sugar inappropriately attaches to, and damages, the cells on the back of your eyes, extremity nerve endings, liver cells, kidney cells, or forms into brain plaques. (2) Gluten proteins in grains. Humans don’t have the enzymes to break down Glutens; the damage these proteins wreck is EXTENSIVE. (3) The hormone Insulin: damaging and caustic. It goes through the arteries like a ball of barbed wire. Plus, the pancreas takes a hit when it has to pump out excessive amounts, like it would if you eat carbs all day long.

If you’ve been struggling with Weight or Health, and you’ve tried everything but eliminating grains, what do you have to lose by going grain free for a month? Really, what do you have to lose? Try it. One month. It’s the start of a whole New Year. You could be totally different in 12 months if you want.

Want some inspiration, and further education? Listen to these podcasts from a Cardiologist and a Neurologist:

Your health, your weight, your moods, your energy levels, they’re in your hands. You are not deficient in a drug. You didn’t break because your body can’t make enough Metformin, Lipator, or Advil. All drugs come with side-effects. All of them. Your body is made mostly of Water, then Protein and Fat, then vitamins and minerals. Feed your body what it needs to remake and repair itself. Carbs make nothing in your body; they’re just an energy source, and even a top athlete doesn’t need much to run well. We can get all the carbs we need in Real Whole Foods, like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and dairy if you tolerate it. Add your proteins and good fats, and you’re on the right track to health and healthy weight. You can do this! Make this your year!